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""They don't want to hire teachers on emergency permits. They don't really have other options at this point," said Fuller, an associate professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies in the College of Education. The shortage, of course, extends beyond Pennsylvania. Nationally, public education employs approximately 360,000 fewer workers than before the pandemic, according to August 2022 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. If trends in job growth are maintained, public education might not hit pre-pandemic levels until at least August 2032, according to a National Education Association (NEA) analysis."
I guess based on the posts of one person, practically everyone in the field of education should just resign.
You quit and find a job where you’re not punished for not doing the impossible….I’ve stated this so many times over and it seems to fall on deaf ears every time. If you do not quit, you accept the unlimited critiscism of any able bodied person as to your poor decision making, under duress/forced by higher ups or not. People like above cannot have it both ways, the buck has to stop somewhere.
But I’d say that whole situation is trendy of our nation as whole where people enter into situations knowing about the caveats and downfalls of a position then proceed to whine endlessly about the arrangement that they VOLUNTARILY entered into.
PS, the reason there is a teacher shortage in such districts, actually, I’d even say across the nation as a whole, is that nobody wants to be paid pennies to deal with rotten, entitled juvenile miscreants who do not value their education.
We need an educated populace for a lot of reasons, like remaining competitive in the international economy, so from a national perspective it's important. At the local level parents want their kids to get an education that will serve them both in the present and in the future when they start work and adult life. If all teachers left, what approach could we use to accomplish that?
For example, before COVID some seemed to think that we could just give kids a computer and they could learn from home. If it worked, went the logic, we could save so much money by not building brick and mortar schools any more. Then COVID gave us a look at that. Hmm, not great. But are there other models we could use to fix the education system?
Absent a different solution, someone has to take on the job (unless you think we should close all the schools). A lot of us retired, and some left due to COVID while others just figured it wasn't worth it. If you somehow knew which people would be the best teachers but they don't want the job, then what? Now they're running out of people who are even qualified? IMO the students have already lost too much ground and we have to do what we can with what we have.
Whining? I don't seek people to complain to. If someone criticizes teachers I can talk about my experience, give a view from the trenches as well as some of the history over the decades I taught. Part of my motive is because when I was teaching full time, I learned that it can be dangerous to your career to express an opinion. Nowadays we have training that says, "Don't complain about your boss on Facebook," but this was nothing that obvious. I made an offhand comment about how hard teaching was in the first year---to someone I wanted to rent an apartment from. She reported it to my principal and I was called on the carpet. Other teachers explained to me that the powers that be don't like hearing complaints because when it comes time to make a new contract with the teachers, they want to be able to say nobody ever complains about the school. It's nice to have this forum and be able to talk more freely.
A few years ago some of us were eating lunch in the teachers' lounge and a colleague said dryly, "This fat paycheck is where it's at...I'm so glad I became a teacher." I replied, "I do it more for the respect." We both got laughs but I got the much bigger one. I gather that in the old days people at least respected teachers for trying to help their kids. Take away the pay and respect, and why would anybody stay, amiright? Only the losers? How will the students get an education?
You quit and find a job where you’re not punished for not doing the impossible….I’ve stated this so many times over and it seems to fall on deaf ears every time. If you do not quit, you accept the unlimited critiscism of any able bodied person as to your poor decision making, under duress/forced by higher ups or not. People like above cannot have it both ways, the buck has to stop somewhere.
But I’d say that whole situation is trendy of our nation as whole where people enter into situations knowing about the caveats and downfalls of a position then proceed to whine endlessly about the arrangement that they VOLUNTARILY entered into.
PS, the reason there is a teacher shortage in such districts, actually, I’d even say across the nation as a whole, is that nobody wants to be paid pennies to deal with rotten, entitled juvenile miscreants who do not value their education.
I suppose now we see what happens when people do exactly what you advocate doing. They quit.
I disagree about your reason for the teacher shortage. I think that most teachers, even in difficult situations, can deal with the students, even the rotten entitled juvenile miscreants that don't value their education. It's the wide range of adults that drive people out.
From the punitive administrative observations to the endless meetings that take up valuable time with no valuable result to the expectation that everyone enrolled in a class will pass, whether class is attended or not, the adults responsible for the care and nurturing of our children are too often distracted by extraneous issues, more concerned with their own care and nurturing, or themselves overwhelmed and unable to manage the load any better than the teachers.
Facing all that and more for pennies is insupportable, and teachers voted en masse with their feet.
Meanwhile, there are still children needing supervision, instruction, feeding and transportation enrolled in schools who can't find enough minimally qualified dingi or dipsticks who could do all that and teach the children too.
The old "if the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum" excuse. Funny the only people I've know who said that were all people who I'd have terminated had I been their manager. Because they weren't good enough. Sure, they could meet their minimums, but just barely. So when you looked at the total package, they couldn't perform.
No top performer, individual or team or otherwise every said "if the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum." They are always looking to better themselves and exceed the minimum. I'm not a fan of Alabama, but they didn't get to be the team everyone wants to beat by saying the minimum was good enough. Teams that want to be the best don't want to play the Nowhere Junior College team. They all want to play the best.
Same in business. Same in academics. Top students want to be around top students.
As the other saying goes: A's hire A's. B's hire C's.
Well, you have to remember that union members are an exception to that rule. Union member workers tend to regress to the minimum that's acceptable simply because no one has to be any better than that. The union protects their jobs. Education is the MOST unionized field of occupation in the US.
I have never forgotten my elementary school years. We didn't have such a thing as a gifted program, but I remember in my class -- which sort of traveled along together year by year throughout elementary school -- that there were 3 kids who some called "the golden children". They got so much attention as the star students. Golden child Louis ended up being a used car salesman. Golden child Kathy ended up being a high-priced call girl. Of the three, only Golden child Diane ended up being truly successful as the owner of her own small corporation. Meanwhile some of us 'just regular' kids got college degrees and became quite successful. Where I was principal, one of our gifted kids ended up very successful in the path they decided on -- death row for multiple murders! I learned a long time ago...don't always bet on the students with the best odds.
You posted that a few times, and I'm curious about a few things. Different people define "successful" in different ways. Is it at all possible that Louis is successful because he enjoys being a used car salesman? Diane, being a business owner, is likely working very long hours with no financial security. Is that the lifestyle that she really likes? And, even if she is happy with that lifestyle, is it possible that Louis would not be happy with that lifestyle? As for Kathy: what happened in her life that caused her to go down that path? And what about the gifted kid who ended up on death row: what happened that caused him to go down that path?
Interestingly, it's the same when teachers grade students, particularly in liberal arts subjects. As and Fs are pretty clear. The differences between D and C, and C and B are more ill-defined. The most contentious being the B range, especially the high Bs.
The better way to do this for teachers imo, is to have a wing of administration that specializes in evaluation. It would be a committee of people with variety of liberal arts and STEM backgrounds and expertise. They would determine merit through a combination of data, observations, and interviews with the teacher and students.
It wouldn't be perfect but would be something. A big issue I'm seeing witb teacher quality is that there's mimimal incentive to improve after about year 5, and lots of incentive to quit and get a better job.
If teachers have minimal incentive to improve after about year 5, perhaps it is because there is no consequence for failure to improve.
In the private sector, they would end up being ranked at or near the bottom. They would receive a written warning, and ultimately lose their job. That's win-win: employees who lose their jobs are freed up to pursue work elsewhere in a role better suited for their abilities.
If teachers have minimal incentive to improve after about year 5, perhaps it is because there is no consequence for failure to improve.
In the private sector, they would end up being ranked at or near the bottom. They would receive a written warning, and ultimately lose their job. That's win-win: employees who lose their jobs are freed up to pursue work elsewhere in a role better suited for their abilities.
I'll clarify that. Not necessarily no improvement, but no incentive to put in more than what's required.
Lack of incentive. Teacher salaries don't start that bad. Starting at 45-55k is reasonable for a new college grad. It's when they realize their raises are only 1 or 2% per year and sit at the same salary for decades as inflation rages around them. When they figure that out, they quit. You don't get growth in this career. It's why people quit after 5-7 years, because they realize that. An incredible teacher has to work really hard, but makes the same as a mediocre one. There's a point where the kids' smiles just don't pay the bills.
It's a realization I came to after I'd been doing it past about 7 years. What's the point of putting in 60-80 hours a week learning and implementing new stuff when I get paid the same if I just do what I did last year and put in just enough to get through the week?
The only way to make real money is to go into administration.
Last edited by redguard57; 10-17-2022 at 10:27 AM..
Well, you have to remember that union members are an exception to that rule. Union member workers tend to regress to the minimum that's acceptable simply because no one has to be any better than that. The union protects their jobs. Education is the MOST unionized field of occupation in the US.
The question isn't whether most teachers are covered by unions...and by the way, in right-to-work-states union power and influence is minimal (and that's Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. West Virginia legislation is pending)...but how much power do the unions have. I was a union rep in a middle school in Maryland, and we did almost nothing. In Virginia we were a right to work state, in in 20 years in administration in a middle school there I got one -- ONE -- phone call from the 'union', and they actually came down on my side (admin). I'm not saying it was that way every place, but those were my experiences.
If teachers have minimal incentive to improve after about year 5, perhaps it is because there is no consequence for failure to improve.
In the private sector, they would end up being ranked at or near the bottom. They would receive a written warning, and ultimately lose their job. That's win-win: employees who lose their jobs are freed up to pursue work elsewhere in a role better suited for their abilities.
I think that's way too broad a statement. There are an awfully lot of workers in this country who are incompetent who are not unemployed.
The question isn't whether most teachers are covered by unions...and by the way, in right-to-work-states union power and influence is minimal (and that's Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. West Virginia legislation is pending)...but how much power do the unions have. I was a union rep in a middle school in Maryland, and we did almost nothing. In Virginia we were a right to work state, in in 20 years in administration in a middle school there I got one -- ONE -- phone call from the 'union', and they actually came down on my side (admin). I'm not saying it was that way every place, but those were my experiences.
Just ask the PAID teachers in NYC's "rubber rooms."
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